HIGH COURT SIDESTEPS BATTLE OVER VOUCHERS

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to enter the national debate over the constitutionality of school "choice" programs that use taxpayer money to send poor children to religious schools.

The justices, voting 8-1, rejected a challenge to a broad-scale Wisconsin policy that has become the model for voucher advocates nationwide. By declining to take the case, the justices left in place a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that said tax-funded vouchers for religious schools do not violate the Constitution's prohibition on government policies that promote religion.

Monday's action sets no national legal precedent, but it does keep up the political momentum for school-choice programs championed by some conservatives. The Wisconsin initiative is the largest nationwide, allowing as many as 15,000 Milwaukee children, or 15 percent of the total student enrollment, to leave public schools for private ones.

Only Justice Stephen Breyer dissented from Monday's order in Jackson vs. Benson. Neither he nor any of the justices in the majority gave an explanation, and as a result, it is unclear why the justices refused to take up one of the most topical but politicized education issues. Four votes are required to accept a case, but five votes are needed to actually decide it. Disputes over aid to religion and the separation of church and state are notoriously difficult for the justices, and many recent church funding cases have been decided by a single vote.

Lawyers on both sides had urged the high court to hear the Wisconsin case, to clear up confusion among lower courts and school officials. Robert H. Chanin, who represented the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Union and others challenging the Wisconsin program, told the justices the case held practical as well as legal significance.

During the 1998-99 school year, Chanin said, Wisconsin will "divert up to $70 million of public funds from the Milwaukee Public Schools and use that money to pay for as many as 15,000 students to attend private schools, the overwhelming majority of which are pervasively sectarian."

Chanin said four other state supreme courts, in Arizona, Ohio, Maine and Vermont, have recently heard challenges to voucher programs and are expected to issue rulings in upcoming months.

Numerous other states are in the process of experimenting with school choice policies.

Voucher opponents in Florida, including the state's two teacher unions, voiced disappointment at the court's decision. And they vowed to keep fighting any voucher proposal raised here. "We had hoped the court would review the case," said David Clark, a spokesman for Florida Teaching Profession-National Education Association. "Vouchers will not reform public schools. They will only weaken them. And we will continue to fight them."

Gov.-elect Jeb Bush has proposed giving vouchers to parents of students stuck in chronically low-performing schools. He portrays it as a limited program that would affect only a handful of underprivileged students in inner city schools.

But some state legislators have already discussed proposing a broader voucher program. "The court's decision . . . gives us a little more of a boost," said Rep. Beryl Roberts, D-Miami, who wants to see the Legislature move forward with a voucher program. "I'm committed to giving choice to parents. We need to look at all the proposals and then find the most effective one."

Patrick Heffernan, president of Floridians for School Choice, last month presented state legislators with a set of guidelines for fashioning voucher legislation.

"This is great news not only for Milwaukee families, but for all families," he said. "It affirms the confidence that we already had that school choice was constitutional."

But others said the Milwaukee ruling would not pass a constitutional test in Florida. The American Civil Liberties Union will be ready to file a legal challenge to a voucher plan, said Larry Spalding, head of the state's ACLU chapter.

"Florida has explicit language in the state constitution that prevents state tax dollars from going to religious institutions," Spalding said. "It's guaranteed that we'll sue."

Wisconsin's groundbreaking program gives vouchers of about $5,000 to any child in a family whose income is near the poverty level. For every student who uses a voucher and transfers out of the Milwaukee public school system, the state cuts the system's budget by about $5,000 _ a consequence that heightened the interest of local public school teachers trying to have the program struck down.